Lightning flashed, searing the night. She heard the sorcerer utter a startled oath, and she screamed as her brother’s soul was snatched away from her flagging grip. Smoke billowed, filling the courtyard. Coughing, she sank back against the statue of Nagash.
‘I beg you help me,’ she said, staring up at the effigy. ‘Heed me, Undying King. Heed your servant in this, her hour of need. Help your people...’ Her voice cracked and she slumped against the statue. Tears froze on her cheeks. ‘Help us.’ She saw the blackened hilt of Sarpa’s barrowblade and snatched it up. As she lifted it in both hands, it crackled with the fading sting of lightning and burnt her palms.
‘I do not know what sort of sorcery that was, but lightning or no, it will avail you nothing,’ the sorcerer said, as he waved the smoke aside. ‘I think I will chain you to my master’s palanquin, corpse-eater. Or what’s left of you. You do not need your arms or legs to stump along, awkward though it may be.’ He coughed. ‘And your scalp will look fine hanging from the banners of the Order of the Fly.’ He clapped his pudgy hands together gleefully. ‘So... arms, legs and hair. In that order, I think.’
‘Come and take them, if you can,’ Tamra said, forcing herself upright. Grief sat like a lead weight in her chest, along with not a little fear. Her brother was gone. But she was a daughter of the Drak, and death was to be embraced. She extended Sarpa’s blade. She heard the winding of a hunting horn again, closer this time.
The sorcerer chortled and advanced, green fire dripping from his crooked fingers. ‘Maybe I’ll burn your tongue out as well. You seem like the type to curse overmuch.’ The pox-flames flared bright and began to swell around him. As they did so, a shadow fell over him, and he glanced up, eyes widening. ‘What–’
A flash of red and black descended. The ground shook, the flames were snuffed and the sorcerer vanished, his body abruptly pulped beneath the curving talons of the monstrosity which now crouched between Tamra and her foes. A long, whip-like tail of vertebral segments lashed with feline agitation as fleshless jaws sagged, exhaling a cloud of masticated spirits. The wailing spirits swirled about the beast, bound to its creaking bones by some fell sorcery. The blightkings drew back from the dread abyssal as it pawed at the snow, fastidiously scraping what was left of the sorcerer from its claws.
Its rider leaned forwards in her saddle, a mocking expression on her youthful face. She was beautiful, Tamra thought, though it was a deadly kind of beauty, like that of a fine blade. She wore black armour, studded with bones, and a tall headdress, in the fashion of the ancient kingdoms of the Great Dust Sea. Her exposed arms were the colour of marble, and her lips were blood red. Her eyes shone like those of a great mountain cat caught in the torchlight.
‘Did we interrupt? My apologies – Nagadron grew impatient.’ The rider’s pale hand stroked the black iron bones of the dread abyssal’s neck. At her touch, the monster stiffened and uttered a piercing shriek. ‘I am Neferata, the Queen of Blood and Mistress of the Barrowdwell. And you... well, it doesn’t really matter, does it?’ Her thin lips stretched in a feral smile as she drew a long curved blade from a sheath on her saddle. ‘After all, you’ll be dead soon.’
The dread abyssal surged forwards, limbs clicking like the workings of some great mechanism. Neferata leaned low, and at her gesture, the bound spirits boiled forwards. They rolled over the blightkings and their mortal followers like a malignant bank of fog. Spectral claws and blades separated heads from shoulders and spilled intestines into the snow. The blightkings tried in vain to strike back at their unearthly foes, but their blows chopped harmlessly through the smoky forms.
Nagadron slammed full tilt into the distracted blightkings, and Neferata’s sword flickered out, capitalising on the damage done by her spectral warriors. She gave a shriek of laughter as the dread abyssal bore a bloated warrior down and bit off his head. An arcane bolt sizzled from her palm and zigzagged through the ranks of pox-worshippers, reducing them to smoking husks. As the slaughter progressed, Tamra heard the hunting horn once more, louder than ever, and felt the ground tremble beneath her feet.
The blightkings broke as Neferata savaged a path through their ranks, and they began to spill back towards the archway, seeking safety. But there was none to be had. A column of armoured riders astride coal-black horses speared through the archway and into the disorganized rabble. The newcomers wore black armour, and their pale feminine faces glared out from within baroque helms as they lashed out at the foe. They pierced the enemy ranks like a blade and the column split in two, encircling the pox-worshippers. The carnage which followed was brief and cruel. When the last of the blightkings lay dissolving in his own juices, Neferata turned her monstrous steed back towards Tamra. As she passed by it, she uprooted the plague-banner and tossed it aside. ‘You are welcome,’ she said, looking down at Tamra.
‘Thank you, great lady,’ Tamra stuttered. She had heard stories of the being known among the Rictus Clans as the Great Lady of Sorrows, but seeing her in the flesh was something else entirely. The vampire radiated a terrible strength, as if her lithe shape were but a mask, hiding something infinitely more monstrous within. Eyes like agates bored into her own, and she felt as if her mind and soul were being peeled back bit by bit.
‘You are of the Drak?’ Neferata said. She gestured to her face. ‘You have that look, something about the jaw.’
Tamra sank down to one knee, leaning against her brother’s sword. ‘Yes, O Queen of Blood. I am Tamra ven-Drak, voivode of these lands.’ She looked up. ‘Or I was.’
‘Yes. You look a bit like dearest Isa. The eyes, I think.’
Tamra hesitated. Queen Isa ven-Drak had been dead for centuries, and her bones long since dust scattered on the wind. Neferata turned away as one of the black riders trotted towards her. ‘The rest of our blightsome friends?’ she asked.
‘Scattered, my lady,’ the vampire said as she removed her helmet. ‘Or impaled, for those who follow to find.’ She had been beautiful, once, and still was, if you ignored the hunger in her eyes and the stains of old gore streaking her ornately crafted war-plate.
‘Ah, Adhema, your little jokes will be the death of you, I fear.’
‘But not today, mistress.’
‘No, not today. Today the Sisterhood of Szandor has won a great victory,’ Neferata said. She looked back at Tamra. ‘Where are your people? Some survived, I assume.’
‘Fled into the crags and hollows,’ Tamra said. She rose at Neferata’s gesture. ‘Where it is safe, my lady.’
Adhema snorted. ‘There is no safety. Not here or anywhere else.’
‘No. But perhaps we might make such a place.’ Neferata raised Tamra’s chin with the tip of her sword. ‘Call your people back. They must go north, to the shores of the Rictus Sea, to the great redoubt there. You know it?’
‘I... yes. Is-is this the word of Nagash? Has he returned? Is he to lead us in battle once more?’ Tamra couldn’t stop the questions from spilling out.
‘Nagash?’ Neferata said, looking down at her. She leaned over and spat in the direction of the effigy. ‘That is for Nagash. And good riddance to him.’
Tamra watched the gobbet of crimson spittle slide down the statue’s cheek. ‘Where is he?’ she asked, softly.
‘Not here, sister,’ Neferata said. ‘I fear we have only ourselves to look to, in the dark days to come.’ She gave a mocking smile. ‘And what a relief it is.’
To all those who worked to make this book the best it could be.
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